Matthew 15:10-28
Tradition, Boundaries, and Grace
James Sledge August 14, 2011
Over the last few decades, many congregations have gone through intense struggles over worship styles, and especially over music in worship. There is even a name for it: “The Worship Wars.” I went to amazon.com and typed in the term “worship wars” and it immediately showed me seven books with “worship war” in the title, along with others that had something to say about these wars.
Our experience with the worship wars has been pretty low grade here at Boulevard. For whatever reason, this congregation seems more open to a little experimentation in worship than some others. But that’s not to say we’ve never had any skirmishes. When I first arrived in Columbus, I occasionally heard disparaging remarks about “those people who worship in the basement.” That they said “basement” rather than “Fellowship Hall” says a lot.
And on those summers when we’ve combined our two services, we have sometimes upset folks who want the organ and not the keyboard. Others thought that using a screen to project words obscured the beauty of the sanctuary. And some who were used to worshiping in the Fellowship Hall, now chapel, found sanctuary worship too rigid and stifling.
Regardless of worship style, no matter what sort of building or architecture, whatever the elements of a worship service, these quite necessarily become bearers of holiness for those who use them. If in any way people draw near to God in worship, then of course the elements and appointments of that worship take on a sense of the sacred.
Congregations don’t have fights over carpet colors in the sanctuary or where to put the flowers or what songs to sing because they obsess over the trivial but because worship is important to them. Every denomination’s, every congregation’s worship traditions, and other traditions as well, are connected to their faith. And so it is hardly surprising that anything which messes with these traditions is highly suspect.
Tradition issues set the context for our gospel reading this morning.
Before Jesus heads out to the district of Tyre and Sidon, some of the Pharisees and scribes come to him, bothered by his disciples’ cavalier attitude toward religious tradition, particularly ritual hand washing. Now ritual washing is about as foreign to us as electric guitars or pipe organs to First Century Jews, but these rituals were an important part of how many Jews tried to maintain a spiritual purity before God. For a variety of reasons, they had become a significant focus, and ignoring these traditions probably offended the Pharisees in much the same way some of us would be bothered if someone came to worship in ragged cut-offs and a tank top. And so these religious leaders asked Jesus, “Why?”
Jesus’ response is to blast the Pharisees and scribes for thinking that honoring their particular traditions is the same as honoring God. He calls them hypocrites and quotes Isaiah to them. “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
Jesus then turns to the crowds and tells them that neglecting purity rituals doesn’t make one impure. Religious impurity comes from their words and their actions.
Then Jesus heads out to Tyre and Sidon where he encounters a Canaanite woman, and here the story gets a little strange. Jesus has just spoken about how traditions can make us hypocrites, yet he proceeds to treat this Gentile woman according to the standard traditions and stereotypes of his day. And what comes from his mouth seems beyond cruel.
Women were not supposed to approach men publicly, and Jews did not associate with Gentiles to begin with, and so a traditional Jew would not have been at all surprised by how Jesus reacts. He does not even acknowledge the woman. But the woman only increases her untraditional, anti-social behavior, following after Jesus and yelling. The disciples are offended by her behavior and ask Jesus to shoo her away.
At which point, ignoring the woman becomes the nicest thing Jesus does. Now he not only says that he is sent only to the lost sheep of Israel, but he calls the woman a dog, a typical Jewish slur for Canaanites. Jesus seems as caught up in his culture’s traditions about women and outsiders as the Pharisees are caught up in theirs about ritual purity.
But then the woman responds to Jesus’ slight about being a dog, turning it on its ear to claim that even dogs should get a little something from the master’s table. It is a stunning exchange. No one ever matches wits with Jesus and comes out on top. Priests and Pharisees and scribes and all sorts of learned religious figures try and always lose. But now a Gentile, Canaanite woman with an unclean, demon possessed daughter goes toe to toe with Jesus, and Jesus can only say, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”
To be honest, I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with this piece of Scripture. How can it be that Jesus, the Son of God, needs to be instructed on God’s grace, needs to have his boundaries expanded? How can he speak to her as he does after just teaching about impurity that comes out of the mouth? Indeed some commentators suggest that this an enacted parable by Jesus. If so, I guess that lets Jesus seem nicer, but it all still seems strange to me.
And it’s even more curious that Matthew places this story in the context of Jesus blasting the Pharisees over how their traditions created boundaries to God’s grace, how impurity came from one’s words. But then again these were issues for Matthew’s own congregation. His Jewish church was increasingly adding Gentile members, and not without some real clashes over traditions and purity.
But I keep coming back to this unnamed, unclean, Canaanite woman whom Jesus calls a dog. She has broken propriety and tradition to get to Jesus. She has acted in ways that simply were not done, and when Jesus insults her and tells her, in no uncertain terms, that he has other priorities and is not going to help her, she dares to argue with him, to challenge him. And Jesus’ assessment of her behavior? “Woman, great is your faith!”
And I can’t help but wonder what that says to those of us for whom faith is conventional, tried and true, connected to the habits and practices we grew up with. Many of us who grew up in the church have picked up lots of assumptions of what worship looks like, what faith looks like, and even assumptions about how God should and would act. But what happens when God’s grace is bigger than we ever imagined?
If you have a lot invested in a particular faith tradition, in a particular way of doing things, then I suppose it might seem a little threatening to hear that God’s love and grace are bigger than you had imagined, that the boundaries are not where you thought they were. But if you have ever wondered whether or not you are important enough to matter to God, if you have ever wondered whether God is concerned about you or longs to connect with you, then the idea that God’s tender love and grace has so little respect for boundaries that even Jesus seems surprised, sounds like absolutely wonderful news to me.
